XII Under the Flavians
Such sober-minded people as had survived the reign of Nero hailed the tyrant’s death as a deliverance, though they had no guaranty of the inauguration of a better state of things. No conceivable change could be otherwise than for the better. At first sight, it seems marvellous that the better class of Romans endured so long and with such supineness a shameful monstrosity like the government of Nero; but it must be remembered that no government is other than the majority of the people desire, or better than they deserve. The mass of the people in the capital were satisfied to have an imperial mountebank ruling over them. Politics had ceased to interest them, they having wholly forfeited their liberties. They cared naught for the fortunes of the Empire, so long as the wheat ships came regularly from Alexandria. The only vestige of independence they retained was the privilege of shouting with impatience when the games were delayed; there were no further rights they cared to demand when Nero, dining in his box at the amphitheatre, threw his napkin from behind the curtains as a signal that he had finished and that the sport might commence. With such a populace as this, the nobler spirits in the city could hope to accomplish nothing. Their only recourse was to glorify their passive sufferings and their death with stoical calmness and undismayed pride. How hopeless it was to expect the inauguration of a revolt among the common people of Rome is shown by the attitude of these people toward Nero’s memory after his death. For a long time, his tomb was continually decked with flowers. Sometimes, his admirers placed his image upon the rostra, dressed in robes of state; again, they would publish proclamations in his name, as though he were yet alive and would shortly return and avenge himself upon his enemies. Occasionally, there were rumors of his reappearance, for the reality of his death was doubted in many quarters, and the undisguised satisfaction with which these reports were received is evidence that the Roman people generally were not yearning for reform.
But those who were absent in the provinces, being neither under the immediate power of Nero nor partners in his excesses, did not endure with such complacence the shame he put upon the Roman name. Men like Galba and Vespasian heard with great indignation from scoffing foreigners how, at Rome, they had seen the emperor acting Orestes or even Canace on the stage. These men could not endure the thought of serving under a ruler who competed with a slaveborn pantomimist. Revolt flamed up among the legions in various parts of the Empire; the guards at Rome joined in it; and when Galba came, who had been proclaimed emperor, they gladly welcomed him.
Rome was shaken in the very foundations of her constitutional ideals. The discovery of the possibility that an emperor could be created away from the city marked the entering of the wedge which was eventually to bring about the disintegration of the Empire. The legions had come clearly to realize that the gift of the Empire was in their hands. The Senate was henceforth supernumerary. The city was no longer to be viewed with that superstitious reverence which had made men deem nothing sacred or authoritative that had not issued therefrom; it was the centre, but no longer the source of Empire. It soon came to pass that “Roman” signified wide-spreading national inclusion rather than, as heretofore, racial exclusion; even a Jew might now claim to be a freeborn Roman citizen, though he had never seen the Capitol.
In consequence of opposing claims to the succession, Italy was once more torn with civil strife, an experience from which she had been free ever since the days of the last Triumvirate. Within eighteen months three emperors were created and destroyed.
Our story, however, does not deal with emperors or with the political history of Rome, except as it is necessary to refer to it as a background for, or an explanation of, the conduct of the women who are herein introduced. Women played no important part in the disturbances which shook the Empire after the death of Nero, and which thus differed from many of the previous revolutions in the State; yet it is entirely consistent with the plan of this work to mention the women who were connected with the principal actors.
Galba, who was an old man when he came to the throne, had been in his youth a great favorite of the Empress Livia. By her he had been advanced in fortune and position. His mother’s name was Mummia Achaica, the daughter of Catulus; but she probably died when he was very young, and he owed the benefits of his training to Ocellina, his stepmother, who was a very remarkable woman in more than one respect. Beautiful and very wealthy, she herself made the advances in courtship to Galba’s father. The elder Galba became consul and was of considerable importance in the State; but he was a very short man and deformed. There is an interesting story to the effect that once, when Ocellina was pressing her suit, Galba, in order that if there were to be any disillusionment on her part in regard to himself it might take place before he gave her his hand, took off in her presence the toga which hid the deformity of his back. The incident shows a praiseworthy ingenuousness of disposition on the part of Galba; it also indicates, what is of more interest to us, the fact that Roman ladies were not unaccustomed to making matrimonial advances in person and with unmistakable directness of purpose. Galba, the future emperor, was adopted by Ocellina as her own son; and it is safe to assume that the honesty of his character was in a large degree the result of her training as well as an inheritance from his father.
Galba was married to Æmilia Lepida, a descendant of the triumvir; but she died during the reign of Claudius, and he never afterward married, even though he was ardently sought by Agrippina the Younger, who had been cuffed by his mother-in-law for seeking to usurp the place of Lepida while the latter still lived.
During the short eight months of his reign, Galba was almost entirely ruled by the influence of Titus Vinius and Piso Licinianus, both of whom perished with him, the latter having been designated by him as his successor. Vinius met a fate which he richly deserved, and which, unfortunately for many Romans, he escaped, though barely, in the days of Caligula. At that time, he disgraced himself as the accomplice and paramour of Cornelia, the wife of his commander, Sabinus, she who paraded the camp at night in the dress of a common soldier. Cornelia, however, expiated her crime by her devotion to her husband in his misfortune at a later day. Vinius attained to fortune by means of methods which are well illustrated by the indignity to which he submitted his daughter Crispina at the hands of the depraved Tigellinus. During Galba’s reign, the people, believing Nero to have been incited to his worst acts by Tigellinus, demanded the latter’s execution, Vinius preserved him from their rage, and thereupon Tigellinus gave a splendid banquet as a thanksgiving for his deliverance. This entertainment Crispina attended, accompanied by her father, who allowed her to receive from their host an immense sum of money. Tigellinus on the same occasion commanded his chief concubine to take from her own neck an extremely valuable necklace and place it upon that of Crispina. But she was soon compelled to expend her ill-gotten gains in a most pitiable manner. After the death of Galba, Piso, and Vinius, the soldiers amused themselves by carrying their heads about the city on the points of spears. When Crispina and Verania, the wife of Piso, visited the camp for the purpose of imploring the heads of their relatives, in order that they might be disposed of with funereal honor, Crispina was not allowed to take that of her father until she had purchased it at a cost of twenty-five thousand drachmas.
Otho, who had been the husband of Poppæa Sabina, was the next emperor; but his reign lasted less than four months, and his only praiseworthy act is the noble manner in which he died. Then came the brief and shameful reign of Vitellius. Rome needed only to come under the rule of a glutton to have exhibited by turn upon her throne a monstrous example of every form of vice to which human nature can become addicted.
This man was the son of that Vitellius who had so shamelessly flattered Messalina and so basely deserted her in her extremity of need. His mother’s name was Sextilia, and she is reported to have been a most excellent and respectable woman, whose character was formed on the model of the ancient morals. Her death is said to have been brought about by her son, in order that the prediction of a German prophetess might be certain of fulfilment, she having told him that, he would reign in security, if he survived his mother. He is accused of having denied her proper nourishment during her illness. Suetonius, however, adds, “that being quite weary of the woeful state of affairs, and apprehensive of the future, she obtained without difficulty a dose of poison from her son.”
Petronia was the first wife of Vitellius. A separation took place which was probably mutually agreed upon, for Petronia bequeathed her property to their son; first requiring, however, that he be released from his father’s authority, Vitellius agreed to this; but shortly after, the son died by poison believed to have been administered by his father. A woman named Galeria Fundano became the second wife of Vitellius; but of her nothing more is known than that Tacitus speaks of her gentle disposition.
With Vitellius, to reign meant merely to feast royally. In this, however, he was only the leading and most noteworthy exponent of a vice characteristic of his time. Gluttony, among the Romans, had come to be exalted to an art; and, in proof that the women of those days were not exempt from it, historians inform us that it was common for individuals of the female sex to be afflicted with the gout. Suetonius thus describes the kind of feasting to which Vitellius accustomed the nobility of Rome: “At a supper given him by his brother, on the day of his arrival in Rome, there were served two thousand rare fishes and seven thousand birds. But Vitellius threw into the shade all this profusion by using on his own table a huge dish, which he named the Shield of Minerva. In it were livers of plaice, brains of pheasants and peacocks, flamingoes’ tongues, roe of lamprey, and a thousand other things which the ships of war had sought from the remotest border of the Euxine to the Pillars of Hercules.”
This dish of Vitellius was made of silver. What its exact weight was we do not know; but inasmuch as a freedman of Claudius had constructed one of five hundred pounds weight, which was evidently inferior, we can well believe the ancient writer when he tells us that the Shield of Minerva was of such prodigious size that a special furnace had to be constructed for its manufacture. It was kept as a monument of extravagance until the time of Hadrian, who caused it to be melted.
The brief reign of Vitellius was closed in a paroxysm of civil strife, which ended within the walls of the city itself. For more than a hundred years,—ever since the sack of Perusia, in which Fulvia played so prominent a part,—the women of Italy had been free from the bitter experiences of war. They knew nothing of the cruelties and atrocities which followed in the wake of ancient battle, except from stories told by grandmothers at nightfall. Now they were to suffer those evils themselves.
In warfare, more than in any other experience, man reverts to his original barbarous, or rather purely animal, type. It is noticeable also that in war, and especially in civil war, women regain some of that ferocity which characterizes the female of the lower types of animals. In the reign of terror during the French Revolution, there were many women who showed themselves as bloodthirsty as any of the men who composed the Committee of Public Safety. So, in the struggles which accompanied the short-lived reigns of these three Roman emperors there were many women who engaged in the battles; and there were some who distinguished themselves by conduct not often exhibited to the discredit of the female sex. Triaria, for example, who was the wife of Lucius Vitellius, the brother of the emperor, is described as having been a woman of the most furious spirit. When Dolabella, who had married Petronia, was in danger of his life, Triaria warned a friend who sought to save him that it would not be good for that friend to seek the exercise of clemency; and when Tarracina was sacked by the Vitellian soldiers, this same Triaria, armed with the sword of a soldier, urged on the men to murder and rapine.
In the final strife between the forces of Vitellius and Vespasian, the city of Cremona, which was held by the former, was besieged. Tacitus informs us that, in their zeal for the cause which their city had adopted, some of the women of Cremona took part on the field of battle and were slain. In view of what followed at the taking of their city, they were fortunate in their lot. “Forty thousand men,” says the historian, “poured into it. The number of drudges and camp followers was still larger, and more addicted to lust and cruelty. Neither age nor dignity served as a protection; deeds of lust were perpetrated amidst scenes of carnage, and murder was added to rape. Aged women who had passed their prime, and who were useless as booty, were made the objects of brutal sport. Maidens were contended for by ruffians who ended by turning their swords against each other.”
The bloodshed and rapine were carried into the city of Rome itself. When he saw that his case was hopeless, the ignoble, indolent Vitellius wished to abdicate; but this neither his soldiers nor the people would allow him to do. Flavius Sabinus was prefect of the city, and he, with the soldiers of the Vespasian party, took refuge in the Capitol. There were women who voluntarily took their places with these besieged men. Among them was Verulana Gratilla, who, having neither children nor relatives, followed the fortunes of the war for no other apparent reason than the pleasure she derived from scenes of carnage. In this conflict the Capitol was fired and the temple of the Empire reduced to ashes. Yet, while all these things were occurring, the common people of Rome, indifferent as to whether they were ruled by Vitellius or Vespasian, looked on as if they were at a gladiatorial show. It was to them nothing more than a spectacle, except that it was also an occasion for absolute lawlessness and an incitement to frenzied indulgence in everything vicious. So brutalized were the people that, while in some parts of the great city the streets were filled with heaps of slain, in other parts, to which the conflict did not extend, there prevailed revelry of the most frantic kind, in which shameless women took a leading part.
The legions of Vespasian conquered; and with his enthronement Rome returned to peace and sanity. The enormities in which she had indulged since the reign of Augustus were for the time expiated.
In the Flavians, a new and healthy dynasty came to the throne of the Cæsars, though not later than the third reign, that of Domitian, it also was to succumb to the effects of the possession of unbounded power. Vespasian had come from an obscure family living at Reate in the Sabine country. His father had collected the revenue in the province of Asia, where his statue had been erected with the inscription: The Honest Tax Collector. His mother, whose name was Vespasia Polla, was descended from a good Umbrian family. Tertulla, his grandmother by his father’s side, had charge of his education, and her memory was always held by him in the highest regard; much more than appears is suggested in the remark of Suetonius that, after his advancement to the Empire, Vespasian loved to visit the place where he spent his childhood. The house and all the surroundings were kept exactly in the same condition, so that amid unchanged scenes he might live over again his boyhood days. It was a simple country house, with no pretension to the splendor in which the great mansions of the city vied with each other; yet it was artistic.
In those times, not even the simplest farmstead was without its statuary; and we may well believe that, as Tertulla, in the courts of Phalacrine, superintended the education of the future builder of the Colosseum, she could point to examples of sculptured beauty to illustrate those ideas of art which were included in every Roman’s training. In the great common room, where the work of the house was done, and where, on winter evenings, the slaves were kept busy with useful occupations, Polla presided, as had the matrons of the old days. In the atrium she entertained her rural neighbors in simple style; and there also she sometimes lectured her son, who greatly displeased her by his tardiness in putting off his boyish ways. She was ambitious for him, and longed to hurry him away to Rome, that in the stir of the city or the camp he might win renown for the Vespasian name. Polla little understood that the time her son spent, idly, as she supposed, watching the teams and cattle about the drinking troughs of the inner court, was fortifying him to withstand the moral dangers of a court of another sort. The rugged, straightforward, simple-mannered soldier, who honored festival occasions by drinking from a silver cup which he treasured as a keepsake from his grandmother, was such an emperor as the Romans had not before seen the like of.
Flavia Domitilla was the wife of Vespasian; but she did not survive to participate with him in the imperial dignity. Of her life and character we know little. There is in existence but one likeness of her—a colossal head found near Puteoli and now preserved in the Campana Museum. This gives her the appearance of a strikingly handsome woman, with a suggestion of pride, but not too powerful to overcome the aspect of good nature. Suetonius says that she was at first the mistress of Statilius Capella, a Roman knight. It may seem strange that a man of Vespasian’s character should marry a woman who had sustained such a former relation; but in those times, wives with a past history in which their present husbands had played no part were not so rare that they were even remarkable. Domitilla enjoyed by birth all the legal privileges of a Latin woman, but she was not a citizen of Rome until a suit had been brought by her father for her in the courts. Possibly this suit was instituted in regard to her inheritance of property; for the privileges of citizenship, as they related to women, consisted of the ability to receive legacies and bequeath property, and to form such matrimonial unions as would be held valid when brought into question in matters concerning property. It is very likely that the explanation of the fact that Domitilla is spoken of as the mistress rather than the wife of Statilius is to be found in the further fact that, he being a Roman knight and she not yet a citizen of Rome, legal marriage could not take place between the two. Suetonius tells us that after the death of Domitilla, Vespasian renewed his union with his former concubine Cænis, the freedwoman and former amanuensis of Antonia, whom he treated, even after he became emperor, almost as if she had been his legal wife; and it is safe for us to suppose that, had he been legally able to do so, Vespasian would have made Cænis Empress of Rome.
Domitilla bore her husband three children: Titus and Doraitian, who became emperors in succession, and Domitilla, who died before her father attained to the purple.
The salutary influence of Vespasian’s character was soon made apparent in the improvement of Roman morals. He was not an energetic reformer; but he curtailed those abuses which were most flagrant, and himself set an example which those who desired his favor found it to their advantage to follow. He expelled from the Senate those who were extraordinarily vicious in their lives, and among them one who had, by request of Nero, contended with a Greek girl in the arena. He required the Senate to pass a decree that any woman who entered into a liaison with the slave of another person should be herself considered a slave—a law which indicates to what lengths the license of women had carried them during the preceding reigns.
One act of cruelty to a woman stains the records of this reign. An insurrection had been stamped out in Belgium; but Sabinus, the leader, had made his escape. His house was burned; still he could easily have escaped into Germany, but that he was unwilling to leave his young wife, Eponia, unprotected as well as homeless. “He concealed himself in an underground hiding place, whose entrance was known only to two faithful freedmen. He was believed to be dead; and his wife, sharing the opinion of those around her, had been for three days plunged in inconsolable affliction. Being secretly informed, however, that Sabinus was alive, she concealed her delight, and was conducted to his place of refuge, where in the end she determined also to remain. After seven months, the husband and wife ventured to emerge, and made a journey to Rome for the purpose of soliciting pardon. But being warned in season that the petition would be in vain, they left Rome without seeing the emperor, and again sheltered themselves in their subterranean refuge. Here they lived together during nine years. Being at last discovered, Sabinus was taken to Rome, where Vespasian ordered his execution. Eponia had followed her husband, and she threw herself at the emperor’s feet. ‘Cæsar,’ she cried, showing her two sons, who were with her, ‘these have I brought forth and nourished in the tombs, that two more suppliants might implore thy clemency.’ Those present were moved to tears, and even Vespasian himself was affected; but he remained inflexible. Eponia then asked to die with him whom she had been unable to save. ‘I have been more happy with him,’ she said, ‘in darkness and under ground, than thou in supreme power,’ Her second request was granted her. Plutarch met at Delphi one of their children, who related to him this sad and touching story.” Why this usually tolerant and always sensible emperor should have been so inexorable on this occasion is a mystery.
There is another instance recorded, in which a woman of different character, presenting a petition of another kind, received an acquiescent response. A lady of rank pretending, as Suetonius puts it, to be desperately enamored of Vespasian,—it must have been that she hoped to achieve a permanent relationship with the widowed emperor,—requested that which it would have been more consistent with her modesty to have avoided. In addition to granting her petition, Vespasian made her a present of four hundred thousand sesterces. When his steward asked how he would have the sum entered in his accounts, he replied: “For Vespasian’s being seduced.” Considering, however, the parsimonious character which the historian attributes to this emperor, we are more inclined to think that the sum must have been entered on the credit side of the ledger.
Vespasian died in A.D. 79. The humor—which is the same thing as saying the sanity—of the man is manifested in his remark, as he felt his life ebbing away: “Well, I suppose I shall soon be a god.” Pliny says of him, “Greatness and majesty produced in him no other effect than to render his power of doing good equal to his desire.” Suetonius declares: “By him the State was strengthened and adorned.”
In this same year occurred the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum. These two cities, by the manner in which they were by one event both destroyed and preserved, have afforded us so much material for the study of Roman home life that a reference to them is entirely in accord with the plan of this book. Among the Romans, even more so than among ourselves, woman’s life was home life. As we look into those Pompeian houses, which the catastrophe of a day rendered impregnable to the siege of centuries, we see in reality before us much which the scraps of information afforded by the ancient writers fail to make intelligible. By a singular good fortune, we are in possession of the narrative furnished by a trustworthy eyewitness of the disaster which overwhelmed Pompeii; it is contained in the two letters which Pliny the Younger wrote to Tacitus, informing him how Pliny and his mother watched the eruption of Vesuvius while his uncle was perishing in the attempt to rescue the wife of a friend and at the same time to satisfy his spirit of inquiry. We will not recite the well-known account, except as it refers to the women who, if for no other reason than that it was their fate or fortune to be present on this memorable occasion, deserve a mention in the history of Roman women. Pliny says: “On the twenty-fourth of August, about one in the afternoon, my uncle was desired by my mother to observe a cloud which appeared of a very unusual size and shape.... This extraordinary phenomenon excited his philosophical curiosity to take a nearer view of it. He ordered a light vessel to be got ready, and gave me the liberty, if I thought proper, to attend him. I preferred to continue my studies.... As he was coming out of the house, he received a note from Rectina, the wife of Bassus, who was in the utmost alarm at the imminent danger which threatened her; for her villa being situated at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, there was no way to escape but by sea; she earnestly entreated him, therefore, to come to her assistance. He accordingly changed his first design, and what he began with a philosophical turn of mind he pursued with heroic purpose. He ordered the galleys to put to sea and himself went on board, with an intention of assisting not only Rectina, but several others, for villas stand extremely thick upon that beautiful coast.” In this design he was unsuccessful; so he went to what is now called Castellamare, in the Gulf of Naples. While there he was suffocated by the poisonous gases which accompanied the eruption. In a second letter, Pliny describes his mother and himself seeking to escape from the effects of a “black and dreadful cloud, bursting with an igneous, serpentine vapor, darting out a long train of fire, resembling flashes of lightning, but much larger.... Soon the cloud seemed to descend, and cover the whole ocean, as indeed it entirely hid the island of Caprese and the promontory of Misenum. My mother strongly conjured me to make my escape, at any rate, which, as I was young, I might easily do; as for herself, she said, her age and corpulency rendered all attempts of that sort impossible. However, she would willingly meet death, if she could have the satisfaction of seeing that she was not the occasion of mine. But I absolutely refused to leave her, and taking her by the hand I led her on, she complying with great reluctance, and with many reproaches to herself for retarding my flight.... Darkness overspread us, not like that of a cloudy night, or when there is no moon, but of a room when it is shut up and all the lights are extinct. Nothing was then to be heard but the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and the cries of men. Some calling for their children, others for their parents, others for their husbands, and only distinguishing each other by their voices; one lamenting his own fate, another that of his family; some wishing to die from the very fear of dying; some lifting their hands to the gods; but the greater part imagining that the last and eternal night was come, which was to destroy the gods and the world together.... Heavy showers of ashes rained upon us, which we were obliged every now and then to shake off, otherwise we should have been crushed and buried in the heap.” The mother and the son escaped, however, and returned to Misenum, where in the midst of still threatening danger they awaited news of the intrepid and fated naturalist.
A POMPEIAN HOUSE
From a water-color by M. Hoffbauer, after a restoration by Jules Bouchot
from Pliny’s description.
This interior, called the house of Pansa, is surrounded by three streets and an alley. The view is from the vestibule. In the centre is a basin, formed to receive water which fell from the roof through an opening which also gave light to the rooms, the doors and portières of which are seen on each side. Near to the basin was the altar for the household god; the space beyond this was the dining room, which led to the peristyle, reception room, and garden. As in the atrium, rooms opened into the peristyle and other parts. The ground-floor exteriors were usually rented for shops. Trade by the Roman nobility was always considered degrading, especially if not extensive, says Cicero; they therefore traded by making their slaves or freedmen the ostensible merchants.
Two-fifths of the city of Pompeii have now been cleared, and we can see the external conditions of the Roman woman’s life as it would have been impossible for modern times to conceive them had it not been for that ancient catastrophe. We can see the streets as they were in the days of Agrippina; we can look into the shops where the women of ancient Italy sought bargains across the marble counters; we can go to the temples where they worshipped, to the theatre where they were thrilled and amused; indeed, we have a theatre ticket, with the number of the seat and the name of the play. Best of all, we can enter houses almost intact, and examine the environments of that home life which in all ages is the special domain of woman. No account of woman can be made complete without a study of her home, and for this reason we quote freely from M. Boissier’s fine description of the Pompeian residence. “The principal rooms are all on the ground floor. The richest inhabitants build themselves houses situated on four streets, thus occupying the whole block. If they were economical, they cut off from this large plot of ground some strips, which they let for a good sum; and we sometimes find shops occupying the whole exterior of the house. While with us the front is reserved for the best rooms, in Pompeii it was given up to business purposes, or else closed with thick walls, in which there were no openings. The whole house, instead of looking toward the street, faces the interior. It communicates with the outer world only by the entrance door, kept strictly closed and guarded; there are few windows, and these only in the upper stories. Families wished to live in private, far from the indifferent and from strangers.... The head of the house did not desire to look into the street, and he was specially averse to having persons in the street look into his house. Even within the mansion he had divisions and distinctions. The part into which he welcomed his visitors was not that to which he retired with his family; and it was not easy to penetrate into this sanctuary, separated from every other part by corridors, closed by doors or hangings, and guarded by porters. The owner received when he wished, he remained in seclusion when so inclined; and in case any client, more troublesome and obstinate than usual, lingered in the vestibule to meet him on his way out, he had a back door on a narrow street, which permitted him to escape....
“If the rooms are not large, they are numerous. The Roman used his residence as he did his slaves; he had different rooms for each event of the day, as he had servants for every necessity of life. Each room in his house is made precisely for the use to which it is destined. He is not satisfied, as we are, with a single dining room; he has them of various sizes, and he uses one or another at different seasons of the year, or according to the number of friends whom he wishes to entertain. The chamber where he takes his siesta during the day and that to which he retires to sleep at night are very small, admitting light and air only through the door, which is not a disadvantage in the South, where coolness is promoted by darkness. Besides, he is there only while he is asleep; for the rest he has his atrium and his peristylium.
“Here he prefers to stay when he is at home. He is here not only with his wife and children, but under the eyes of his servants, and sometimes in their society. In spite of his fancy for seclusion and isolation, of which I have spoken, he does not shun their company; for the family of antiquity is more extensive than ours. It embraces, while recognizing their inferiority, the slave and the freedman; so that the master, in living with them, feels himself among his own people. These open and closed atria, where the family spends its time, are found in all Pompeian houses without exception; they are indispensable to furnish light for the rest of the dwelling. Consequently, all persons, even the poorer classes, took pleasure in ornamenting them tastefully, and sometimes with profusion. If the extent of ground permitted it, various shrubs were planted, and a few flowers were made to grow.”
Rome had for its next emperor Titus, who, in the two years of his reign, showed himself the best and wisest ruler Rome had ever known. “I have lost a day,” he said, when at evening he could not remember having afforded anyone assistance. He inherited his father’s good sense, he had profited by the elder’s experience, and he came to the throne after having tasted and become satiated with the vices common to his age. He first married Arrisidia, the daughter of a knight. Of her we know nothing further. After her death, he took to wife Marcia Furnilla, a woman of very noble family, but probably of ignoble mind, for he divorced her, and retained the custody of their daughter. This was a Julia, who was true to the character common to the imperial women of that name. We shall have occasion to discuss her a little later.
The woman with whose history the name of Titus was chiefly connected and who exerted more influence upon his life than any other was Berenice, the daughter of Agrippa the Great. She was a Jewess by race, but Roman in sympathy as well as by allegiance; and for character she may well be classed with such Roman ladies as Poppaea or Julia the daughter of Augustus. She was first married to Herod of Chalcis; but he died, and for a long while she remained a widow in the company and under the protection of her brother Agrippa. During this time, the pair paid a visit to Rome, and while on the way stopped at Cæsarea, where Festus was governor. Here Berenice listened to the Apostle Paul, as he made his eloquent plea in answer to his accusers and appealed to the tribunal of Caesar. Berenice’s continued widowhood, joined with the known laxity of her morals, caused ugly stories to be set afloat regarding her relations with her brother; whereupon she induced Polemon, King of Cilicia, to become a proselyte to Judaism and marry her. This marriage seems to have been unsatisfactory to both parties, for Berenice soon returned to Jerusalem, and Polemon recanted from his Jewish faith. At this time, Titus was with his father in Judea, and, though Berenice was much older than he, the young Roman was fascinated by her extraordinary beauty, so much so that he took her with him on his return to Rome. She was given apartments in the palace, and there, to all appearance, she lived with Titus as his wife. In fact, he would have made her his wife indeed, had it not been for the strong prejudices of the Romans against foreign alliances; but when he succeeded to the throne, rather than that his rule should be impaired by any scandal, he sent Berenice away, though the separation was the source of poignant grief to them both.
Titus died twenty-six months after he came to the throne, and his brother Domitian—who, unfortunately for the history of Rome, possessed a healthier constitution as well as an inferior disposition—reigned in his stead. Domitian has been called the second Nero, the character of his reign being very similar to that of Nero’s rule. This unworthy son of Vespasian had disgraced his youth by vicious extravagances of all kinds; but, on coming to the throne, he seemed to have reformed. This, however, was only temporary. As has been remarked, on the day of coronation there are few bad monarchs. All begin well; but the majority of despots end badly.
Domitian even began his reign as a reformer. He constituted himself censor. In this capacity his attention was turned first to the college of Vestal Virgins, who had so far forgotten the character which was the prime essential to their office that they had become notorious for the licentiousness of their conduct. Three of these priestesses received an order to make away with themselves. Cornelia, the chief Vestal and the worst offender, was condemned to suffer the prescribed punishment of entombment. In the story of her death there is an incident worthy of note as illustrating the effrontery which may be developed in a woman by a habitual though unwarranted assumption of superior holiness. As she was descending to the tomb, Cornelia’s veil caught on the steps; when an official offered to disentangle it, the Vestal in a horrified manner bade him desist, as her consecrated character could not endure the profane touch of a man.
Domitian, moreover, passed an edict prohibiting to prostitutes the use of the lectica, or travelling chair; they also lost the right of receiving legacies or inheriting estates. But this enthusiasm for morality was short-lived, and his censorship never interfered with his own indulgences or extended to his own family. The empress of that day was Domitia Longina, who seems to have been a woman who would find the extravagances of Nero’s libidinous entertainments entirely consistent with her character and tastes. She fell desperately in love with Paris, the famous actor of the time. In consequence she was divorced; but her husband, unable to endure the separation, recalled her on the pretence that it was demanded by the people. Her influence over the emperor is perhaps further indicated by the fact that we hear of nothing sinister having happened to Paris; but the Senator Helvidius, who, under the character of OEnone, held Domitia up to scorn in a farce which he wrote, was put to death. There is in existence a bust of Domitia Longina, but the sole reflection which her appearance suggests is the amount of labor and care which must have been demanded of her slaves in the production of the innumerable tiny curls in which her hair is arranged. During the lifetime of Titus, his daughter Julia was offered to Domitian in marriage, the example of Agrippina and Claudius having established the legality of a union between an uncle and a niece. But at this time Domitia ruled the heart of the future emperor. Afterward, the unhappy Julia was induced to enter into a criminal intercourse with Domitian, and lost her life in an attempt to destroy its proof. This was a danger which was frequently incurred by married women, in order to prevent the birth of legitimate offspring. Large families in wealthy houses were exceedingly rare. In the Museum of the Vatican there is a statue of Julia, represented as the goddess Clemency. There is also in existence a profile engraved upon stone, as well as a bust which is preserved in the Uffizi Gallery. It requires but a glance at these likenesses to enable one to understand why the Greeks called Julia “The New Juno.”
During the reign of Domitian, the Colosseum, the building of which had been commenced by Vespasian, was completed and opened. In this immense amphitheatre there were seats for eighty-seven thousand spectators, and fifteen thousand more were able to find standing room. In its arena, during each year, hundreds of men—gladiators, criminals, and Christians—fought and fell in mortal agony for the amusement of those great audiences, of which women formed a goodly proportion. There sat the empress in a front box which was especially designed for the Vestals; and it frequently happened that the scene upon which the eyes of those ladies rested was the mangling of the bodies of Christian women by the claws and teeth of ferocious beasts.
Women also voluntarily took their places in the arena. Races in the stadium between young girls were frequent, nor was it a thing entirely unknown for women to engage in the deadly sport of the gladiators. Sometimes they faced the wild animals; and at times they even took the trident and the net of the retiarii and tried their skill against the swordsmen. Juvenal has his fling at Mævia, who, “with breast exposed, grasps the hunting spear and transfixes the Tuscan boar.” The satirist also exercises his grim humor on the picture of a woman practising the art of fencing. “Who has not beheld the wounds of the wooden post, which she dints with courageous foil, and attacks with her shield, and goes against with skilful precision? A matron most preeminently worthy to dance to the trumpet at the indecent Floral games. Perhaps, however, she is meditating a more serious purpose, and intends to engage in real earnest at the amphitheatre, for hire. What modesty can a woman show that wears a helmet, eschews her sex, and delights in feats of strength?”
It would have been a marvel if Domitian had been allowed to end his life otherwise than by violent means. Suetonius accuses Domitia of being privy to her husband’s assassination, but does not explain in what way she took part in it. Suetonius had a rare nose for scandal, and always believed the worst. The emperor was killed by a freedman, a steward of Domitilla.
“When he dreadful to the rabble grew,
Again in the death of this tyrant we see how the woman love for an innocent babe will survive every vice of the grown man. There was in the palace a woman named Phyllis, who had been Domitian’s nurse. She was the only one who showed any respect for the dead emperor. First, she had his body interred at his villa in the Latin Way; then, when she found a safe opportunity, she burned the remains and, carrying the ashes to the mausoleum of the Flavian family, mingled them with those of Julia, whose nurse she had also been.
The Empress Domitia seems to have survived her husband many years; for an inscription, the date of which corresponds with the year 140, mentions that one of her freedmen, after building a temple to her, offers the decuriones of Gabii fifteen thousand sesterces, the income of which was to be spent in keeping the building in repair and in celebrating the birthday of his mistress.
The period of Roman history which we have traversed in our study of woman shows the ancient pagan Empire at its best materially and at its worst morally. We are about to enter upon a new epoch. We shall speedily begin to notice premonitions of decline, but we shall not again witness such an absolute and all-prevalent abandonment of the requirements of morality. From the days of Cæsar Augustus down to the end of the reign of Domitian, all that is recorded of Roman women, with a few noble exceptions, is little more than a wearisome repetition of instances of astonishing sensuality. Why was it that the women of this period indulged to such an unnatural and unrestrained degree the grosser appetites? It was not because they were unacquainted with the most emphatic precepts of morality. Their ancestors had idealized feminine chastity as it has been exalted among no other people in the history of the world. The virtue of temperance was taught by their philosophers in the most eloquent language; and the diatribes of their satirists are evidence that the Roman conscience was not wholly at rest in regard to the excesses which were prevalent. How then are we to account for this monotonous orgy of libidinosity?
So far as the question concerns the emperors, there is but one answer: it is found in their unbounded power, in which, their will being responsible to no one, they were absolutely at liberty to indulge caprice or lustful impulse to the extent of their personal capabilities. When, as was natural in the circumstances, the characters of these potentates were warped in the wrong direction, their influence, not to speak of their tyrannical power, was incalculably detrimental to female virtue. But the real underlying cause for the sensuality of the women whom we have brought into review was the utter purposelessness of their lives, joined to an entire lack of all spiritual impulses in the direction of self-respect. The Roman woman’s life during the period under discussion was one of absolute ease and unbounded luxury, although the possibility of abject physical misery, in the form of banishment or a violent death, always hovered near. Luxury is always conducive to sexual incontinence; and, as is well known, customary peril engenders recklessness. The minds of the Roman women were not fortified by adequate spiritual impressions to offset these impulses. Such ideas of chastity as were inherited from the ancient customs were not founded on a belief in the dignity of womanhood, but rather on the conception of marriage as a property right held by the husband in the person of the wife. Adultery was the infringement of the husband’s property rights, rather than an injury to a woman’s personal worth to herself. When divorce for political reasons became common, the sense of the validity of those rights grew correspondingly dim. A woman, seeing that she was married not for her person, but for the sake of her friends, came herself to set little store by that which to her husband was not the chief item in the contract. The arid formalism of her religion also gave but little support to any restraining instincts of self-respect. It needed a new religion to enable woman to rediscover in herself a spiritual nature, which could be tainted and injured by the abuse of the body.
THE CHIEF VESTAL
After the painting by Henri P. Motte
Vestals were believed by the Romans to be the guaranties for the existence of the Empire. To these priestesses was paid a respect as great if not greater than any Roman official might claim. Anyone offering insult was punished with death. Whenever a Vestal appeared in public, she was preceded by a lictor, before whom everyone made way, even the highest officer of the State. The faces were always lowered in her presence..... Domitian constituted himself censor; his attention was turned first to the college of Vestal Virgins, who had become notorious for licentiousness. Three priestesses received an order to make away with themselves. Cornelia, the chief Vestal and the worst offender, was condemned to suffer the punishment of entombment. As she was descending to the tomb, Cornelia’s veil caught on the steps; when an official offered to disentangle it, the Vestal in a horrified manner bade him to desist, as her consecrated character could not endure the profane touch of a man.